Two of the most common regrets reported by the dying include wishing they had not worked so much and wishing they’d allowed more time for fun.

Ease your future sorrow by working one exercise into your busy regimen: play.

You may see it as unproductive or childish, but don’t dismiss its importance.

“We don’t lose the need for novelty and pleasure as we grow up,” according to Scott G. Eberle, editor of the American Journal of Play and vice president for play studies at the New York museum The Strong.

Philadelphia resident Carl Ewald fell for the thrill of rock climbing in law school.

When he returned home, he called up friends to scale some mountains.

“They’d said ‘Yeah, that’s a great idea. We’ll do it sometime,’ ” Ewald recalls. “They never committed it to after the call.”

After a year without climbing, Ewald reached out beyond his circle of friends and banded together with other area enthusiasts who were tired of maybes and the mundane.

Ewald and his brother Jonathan formed TerraMar Adventures.

“I started the club with the idea that there’s a lot of people who want to do things but they don’t have the friends to do them with,” Ewald says. “And that it’s a heck of a lot more fun to do it with others than alone.”

The club introduces hundreds to new people, places and expeditions, from outdoor activities such as hiking and sky diving to indoor ones best suited for the cold climate such as glass blowing and sushi making.

At the root of all recreation is play, argues author and psychiatrist Stuart Brown in his book, “Play.”

Comparing play to oxygen, Brown writes “it’s all around us, yet goes mostly unnoticed or unappreciated until it is missing.”

In all its shades — from art, literature and music to flirting, joking and daydreaming — play can be a powerful signifier of stability, or lack thereof, Brown has noted.

For decades, the founder of the National Institute of Play has studied the play resumes of more than 6,000 people, including inmates, artists, businesspeople and Nobel Prize winners.

Brown found a lack of play to be as much of a precursor of criminal behavior as any factor among murderers in Texas prison. Couples were able to rehabilitate their relationships through playing together.

So, bring joy to your adult life by engaging in these playful activities:

1. Sports league

Nothing says playing like sports.

In fact, many adults feel comfortable with only that sort of playing.

“The only kind (of play) we honor is competitive play,” according to Bowen F. White, a medical doctor and author of “Why Normal Isn’t Healthy.”

While playing doesn’t have to mean exerting dominance over an opponent, sports leagues are a great way to exercise and socialize.

If you can’t wrangle enough friends to play some hoops, arrange a game online. Find a pickup basketball game at infinitehoops.com, an ultimate Frisbee game at usaultimate.org or baseball/softball game at dugout.org

And if you can’t wait for spring, sign up for a bowling league at your local alley.

Dozens of teens and adults pack the community arts space at 7:30 p.m. for open mic night to entertain and be entertained.

“Any kind of talent (can sign up),” says the Oaklyn resident, who has shared a stage with Bruce Springsteen and Danny DeVito. “If you have an interpretative dance you want to do, go for it.”

However, unlike the traditional open-mic night, O’Brien schedules a featured artist to play at 9 p.m., guaranteeing at least one talented performer.

At Studio LuLoo, adults are welcome to bring wine and leave their troubles behind, along with their drum kits and keyboards since they are provided, too.

“It’s a way for adults to blow off steam,” says O’Brien, a mother of two. “As employees or parents, we always have to be on. But here, you’re able to be creative. ... adults need to sing, too.”

3. Role play

Adulthood brings self acceptance.

You are who you are — until you’re live action role playing in the woods of a campground as a sword-wielding warlord.

That’s who Scott Melzer, a financial planner from Monmouth Junction, Middlesex County, chooses to be.

Melzer, like the dozens who make the monthly trek to campgrounds in Medford, Millville, Hammonton and Manalapan, Monmouth County, lives out his fantasy however he pleases, a universal rite at Mystic Realms.

Though combat abounds and the events call to mind “Lord of the Rings” or “Game of Thrones,” Mystic Realms is a cooperative organization, and a theatrical one at that, said founder Anton Kukal.

“We see Mystical Realms,” says the Millville resident, “as a multidimensional hobby that involves all kinds of things like stage crafts, writing, prop making, costume making and especially improvisational acting, because that’s what we all are. We’re performers. We are both the actor and the audience.”

As theater, this play is for display.

Mystic Realms showcases its theatrical talents at regular weekend events, including Fantasy Faire at Millville’s Wheaton Arts and Cultural Center in Millville in June and Guildhall at Evermoore at Camp Kettle Run in Medford from Feb. 7 to Feb. 9.

For Melzer, Mystic Realms is both a refuge and a retreat.

“Some people look at what we do as escapism, but I look at it as a vacation,” he says. “This is where I can lay aside my cares in the world.”

The stress that comes with being a financial planner compounds the need for such a playful outlet.

“But every once in a while in the world we’re not able to just play. As adults, we forget how to play and it’s very important for us to do so. So I can come here and be someone completely different, someone supportive.”

4. Organize a group

“Dungeons & Dragons” was the inspiration for Mystic Realms, says Kukal, who, in the 1980s, tried to simulate the role-playing game in the woods “with a garbage can lid and a broomstick as my sword.”

Some adults prefer to play it simple.

When life took childhood friends away from D&D, Erial resident Vince Warner filled their seats through Meetup.com, a group-organizing site that allowed him to summon more than enough wizards and witches to a designated location.

So far, he has assembled four autonomous groups with Meetup.com, the last taking him “all of 5 minutes to get people in a room.

For whatever recreation — poetry writing, stand-up, Minecraft — the free site allows members to coordinate when and where they want to gather.

5. Get wild

If you can’t muster the motivation to start a club, look for one.

Every week, TerraMar Adventures takes members across the Delaware Valley on a new expedition, such as hiking, wine tasting, horseback riding, rock climbing, paintball skirmishes or hot air ballooning.

A conversation on the club’s most extreme forays, from hang gliding to sky diving, took an odd turn.

“Do you know there’s an elk herd in Pennsylvania?” Ewald asks.

As a lark, club members joined Ewald in Weedville, Pa., last Labor Day.

They were not alone.

“We went for the elk (mating) season, to see the elks competing for the females,” Ewald says.

Though he didn’t spot any elks butting heads, Ewald got an earful of bugling, an elk’s echoing, shrill song meant to attract the ladies and ward off competitors.

Natural Geographic and Discovery Channel may give you a glimpse into nature and the wildlife that inhabit it, but the fun curiosities of nature aren’t fully experienced until experienced first hand.

6. Get down with getups

Through his adventure club, Ewald has found many like-minded people, as well as some runners.

Regular group runs evolved into a training team and, finally, a fellowship.

“I’ve made some of the best friends of my life running,” he says. “If you’re running with someone who you enjoy spending time with, it makes it a lot of fun.”

After entering races, including several Broad Street Runs, Ewald and his team started their own.

Headed in its fifth year, the ODDyssey Half Marathon is Philadelphia’s only springtime long-distance race and an amalgamation of their interests, including funny costumes.

Even the slowest racer in the field of more than 3,000 runners can win its costume contest, a fun quirk created by the group.

“You’re not required to, but we had 35 percent run in costumes,” Ewald says. “Even if you don’t run in costumes, it’s entertaining.”

7. Babysit

Having trouble having fun?

Let a kid lead you to your inner child.

If you don’t have young children, have your friends, family or neighbors owe you a favor and offer to babysit.

You can impart wisdom on the youth and maybe have their innocence rub off on you.

Best of all, you can also get in on all their video games, and then get down on the rug to play with action figures, Legos and dolls, without every having to answer for it.

Reach Steve Wood at (856) 486-2474 or at stewood@gannett.com.

FOR MORE INFO

¦Mystic Realms has various events each month. For a full event list and more information, visit www.mysticrealms.com